Radiation: how does it work?

Something that interacts very strongly has a hard time being harmful because it can't penetrate anything. Something that interacts not at all has a hard time being harmful because it passes right through without doing anything. Something that interacts only occasionally has the best chance of being harmful because it can actually get to you, and then interact.

Would it be fair to say that there's a proportional relationship between the wavelength of the radiation and the amount of...if any...damage it could do, or how it works?

The energy of a wave of electromagnetic radiation is proportional to its frequency ( which is inversely proportional to it's wavelength ). Somewhere in the higher frequencies of the ultraviolet region of the EM spectrum it becomes energetic enough to knock an electron out of the atom it is orbiting - hence ionizing radiation. The negatively-charged electrons and positively charged ions created by ionizing radiation may cause damage in living tissue.

Gamma radiation is e-radiation but obscenely high energy, far past microwave, past infrared, past visible, past ultraviolet, past x-rays. In nature (at least on Earth), it's quite rare. It is the most penetrative, does not interact well with matter, but can interact past several inches of steel. It takes about a foot of lead to block all gamma from a moderate source.

Could you clarify the bolded bit? I can't figure out if I should parse it as "interacts and does bad things to matter" or "does not interact with matter very much". My assumption was that gamma rays were quite harmful biologically.

Gamma is the most penetrative. This means it gets through more of what's in its way, but in order to do so it has to not interact with any of that. An interaction is a block. Alpha, for example, is strongly interactive and therefore blocked by your skin.

Would it be fair to say that there's a proportional relationship between the wavelength of the radiation and the amount of...if any...damage it could do, or how it works?

Somewhere in the higher frequencies of the ultraviolet region of the EM spectrum it becomes energetic enough to knock an electron out of the atom it is orbiting - hence ionizing radiation. The negatively-charged electrons and positively charged ions created by ionizing radiation may cause damage in living tissue.

Yay! That's what I was thinking!*

*That there was a relationship between the reading I'm doing, on measurement of quantum particles, and why radiation is harmful but regular (aka lightbulb) light isn't.

Minor update: my mother recently met another, even more paranoid wacko at the local food coop, and that killed my plans of getting a wifi router that were sooooo close to coming to fruition.On a side not, she also got an iphone that she holds 3ft from her head like it's a radioactive scorpion every time she makes a phone call, screaming at the phone, with the speakerphone volume set to maximum power. My bedroom is right next to her study, so whether I am in the car, or in my room, I will often hear her yelling at the thing. There must be a special place in hell for people who spread misinformation like that, because she also was lead to believe that google is the devil, chrome is malware, and facebook is owned by the CIA. Either she is really gullible, or she just listens to the weird people at her prayer circle way to much.

Either she is really gullible, or she just listens to the weird people at her prayer circle way to much.

Or, you know, both.

Caelestian wrote:

Somewhere in the higher frequencies of the ultraviolet region of the EM spectrum it becomes energetic enough to knock an electron out of the atom it is orbiting - hence ionizing radiation. The negatively-charged electrons and positively charged ions created by ionizing radiation may cause damage in living tissue.

Correct but incomplete. Most of the UV range is not ionizing, as you say, but it can still cause damage by exciting bonds, even though it doesn't have enough energy to liberate an electron.

Either she is really gullible, or she just listens to the weird people at her prayer circle way to much.

Or, you know, both.

Either way, I completely stopped taking her opinions seriously on any topic close to this after she a) said that she though that prayer should be taught in public schools, and b) she started trying to slip "behavior modifying" herbal remedies into my energy drinks. Ah well, two more years, and I'm off to college.

Either she is really gullible, or she just listens to the weird people at her prayer circle way to much.

Or, you know, both.

Either way, I completely stopped taking her opinions seriously on any topic close to this after she a) said that she though that prayer should be taught in public schools, and b) she started trying to slip "behavior modifying" herbal remedies into my energy drinks. Ah well, two more years, and I'm off to college.

this post, in the context of all your others, has me face-palming so hard i don't even know where to start. spend as much time out of the house as possible. jesus.

edit - SOLUTION! bring home weed, tell her it's herbal and behavior modifying. you don't even need to smoke it!

Either she is really gullible, or she just listens to the weird people at her prayer circle way to much.

Or, you know, both.

Either way, I completely stopped taking her opinions seriously on any topic close to this after she a) said that she though that prayer should be taught in public schools, and b) she started trying to slip "behavior modifying" herbal remedies into my energy drinks. Ah well, two more years, and I'm off to college.

this post, in the context of all your others, has me face-palming so hard i don't even know where to start. spend as much time out of the house as possible. jesus.

edit - SOLUTION! bring home weed, tell her it's herbal and behavior modifying. you don't even need to smoke it!

--RC

Slightly off topic, but that reminds me: she used to burn sage (which smells A LOT like weed) all over the house once a week. Just glad that we never had anyone over who wondered about the smell.Back on topic: I know her reaction would be hilarious, but I would really rather avoid stuff that could land me in jail. Having a criminal record does not make colleges more likely to accept me, and college is phase one of me getting the hell out of dodge.

Recently, I have come to realize that explaining this to her is sort of like trying to nail a biscuit into a brick: utterly futile.

Clearly you've never eaten a biscuit cooked by Boy Scouts .

Quote:

On a side not, she also got an iphone that she holds 3ft from her head like it's a radioactive scorpion every time she makes a phone call, screaming at the phone, with the speakerphone volume set to maximum power. My bedroom is right next to her study, so whether I am in the car, or in my room, I will often hear her yelling at the thing.

There's a few gadgets out there that will turn a mobile phone into a corded device (whether headset or handset). That might be worth looking into.

Or see if you can convince her a Bluetooth headset uses a special type of radiation that isn't harmful.

well, at this point, all you can really do is resign yourself to the old adage "you can't reason a person out of a position she didn't reason herself into" and stick it out until you can get the fuck out of Laredo.

Has someone already posted that a 100W lightbulb puts out about 100W of radiation, most of it infrared, but a decent part of it as visible light. 100 freaking watts of radiation... WiFi and cell phones are measured in milli-watts to watts, so orders of magnitude worse.

Oh, looks like Frenzzy beat me to the light bulb comment... but I'm going to post it anyway. What even scarier, think about what an oven puts out!

Hmm, how about any object that happens to be above absolute zero? Hell, space has a background temperature of ~3K which is greater than zero. It turns out that anything that isn't at 0K emits based on Plank's law, with variations based on its emissivity. Of course 3K material emits really long wavelength EM radiation, but its still radiation!

So ok, radiation emission... but now we've added the type of radiation to the discussion. Infrared radiation would be a bit different than strong radio wave radiation or UV, at least in terms of human effect.

So ok, radiation emission... but now we've added the type of radiation to the discussion. Infrared radiation would be a bit different than strong radio wave radiation or UV, at least in terms of human effect.